Steem (STEEM): The Social media that gets you paid

One of the major factors that make cryptocurrencies popular is their extreme volatility. From Bitcoin to Ethereum, Dash, Litecoin and even Ripple, you will be hard-pressed to find a cryptocurrency that does not exhibit high volatility levels. As a result, many speculators have been attracted to the cryptocurrency market in a bid to make a quick profit. However, with most cryptocurrencies depending on speculation and rumors to grow, one coin by the name of Steem (STEEM) has a particularly interesting business model.

What is Steem

The creators of Steem (STEEM) tout it as a social media platform that allows its users to profit from content creation while establishing a revolutionary platform that disrupts traditional models such as Reddit, Facebook or YouTube.

The developers of the Blockchain project designed STEEM to be a digital currency that forms part and parcel of a social media platform. But unlike most social media platforms, users on Steem’s social platforms get rewarded with STEEM for upvoting, liking, and publishing content thus providing a decentralized monetization concept that grows a community of content creators and their fans.

How does Steem Work?

The concept of how Steem operates is pretty much the same when compared to other popular social media platforms. The only difference is that Steem users get incentives for participating on the Steem (STEEM) platforms.

Steem dollars

For every post published, the creator gets an amount of STEEM tokens equivalent to 1USD. Given the volatility of cryptocurrency prices, the reward is more like a promise that the creator will get STEEM amount equivalent to one dollar. Plus a 10 percent annual interest for each Steem dollar.

Steem power

Since users are paid whenever they engage on the platform depending on the popularity of the content, Steem has made it such that a user can increase the influence they have on the platform so that certain content creators get more Steem dollars based on their Steem power. The Steem power is used to determine users with more influence especially for upvoting content on the platform. A user can power up or down to increase or decrease their Steem power.

Steem (STEEM) has in built inflation

Yes that’s right, Steem, unlike most cryptocurrencies has a 100 percent annual inflation built into its system. In fact, the company claim to have a cumulative of over 20 million USD paid out to users of the platform as rewards since June 2016. The cryptocurrency has sparked a lot of interest from crypto enthusiasts considering it does not have a coin limit. According to CoinMarketCap it currently priced at $4.19 with over 1 billion in market capitalization.

Chart By Coinmarketcap.com

Wil Steem stand the test of time?

Well, there is certainly allot to be expected from Steem considering it’s only been around for a few years. The company is mainly focused on digital content businesses proving users a smart media token that can be created and launched by anyone on the platform to incentivize behavior or fund particular projects on the platform.

By running a reward based decentralized social network, Steem (STEEM) can prove to have real-world utility cryptocurrency that will give it an edge over other cryptocurrencies. According to Ned Scott (one Steem’s creators) “People should be getting paid for the work they do. People are showing up for free and putting countless hours of their time into these platforms that make money from them”